


life after sleep

by usernameapathy



Category: Tales of Berseria
Genre: F/F, Full Game Spoilers, Gratuitous Magilou, Happy Ending, Minor Violence, Suicide mention, Tales of Femslash 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26387764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usernameapathy/pseuds/usernameapathy
Summary: Three years after the end of Tales of Berseria, Velvet wakes up.Written for Tales of Femslash Week 2020, Day 5 prompt "Cattail/Peace or prosperity"
Relationships: Velvet Crowe/Eleanor Hume
Comments: 17
Kudos: 48
Collections: Tales of Femslash Week 2020





	life after sleep

She stares out across the little stream behind the sanctuary and tries, again, to remind herself that this is real.

The dreams didn't feel that way, as she remembers them now. There was a pervasive vagueness as they leapt from one highlight to another: she and Laphi would be having an adventure of some kind with the echo of someone she'd known in reality, and then they'd be right at the next one, without the days of intervening tedium that would be required in real life. (Though as she thinks back to her real travels, those days, in truth, had been...)

And there was that sense of underlying contentment throughout everything. Her lip twitches without real humor behind it. If they had been another illusion forced upon her, instead of just... just rest, that _alone_ should have been enough to let her see through it.

Except, of course, it hadn't before. Her brother's face from the illusion of Aball doesn't really haunt her anymore, not after what happened, but others do. One in particular on this day of all days-

She stops and takes a deep breath. Bends down besides the river. Flowers grow all throughout the outskirts of Auralond, in almost every kind and color that can be found in Eastgand, but the river's edge is the only place where you can find cattails - as she's learned they're called. (They hadn't really been present at the tiny streams in the woods outside Aball.) She watches a pair of the long plants rub against each other in the slight breeze, and lifts her hand in their direction.

Her right hand, of course.

She breathes in deeply. This _is_ real, and maybe one day she'll be able to entirely believe that. Until then, all she can do is keep moving forward, the way she always has.

Not that she's the only one...

***

Eleanor Hume finishes laying her notes out alongside her on the bed and sits back, closing her eyes briefly. Auralond is a very new town, one of several springing up in Eastgand since the "end" of the "daemonblight", and if the founders may have slightly less... silly ideas then their distant neighbors off at Lake Perniya, they're still a little more focused on the creation than on the practicalities. As such, the room is very small: just a narrow bed against the outer wall, underneath the window, a dresser farther along the inner wall leading to the door, and a scenic painting hanging over the bed. It reminds her-

It reminds her of Velvet's old room.

She opens her eyes and looks down at the notes. _I can't think about that. Not when people need help right here and now._

Since the majority of humankind lost their unnatural resonance, it's become a lot harder to separate most cases of daemons on the rampage from encounters with ordinary bandits or predators. The entity that the people of Eastgand's frontier call the Hollow Knight, though, is an exception. She first heard about it when helping to repair weather-wrought damage to a town further up the Perniya road: a hulking figure clad in a tarnished suit of Midgand knight's plate who randomly falls upon even large or well-armed groups and wordlessly hacks at them with a rusty greatsword.

Except in some cases, when it instead tilts back its visor - which none of the surviving witnesses had ever been able to see a face inside - and entirely consumes its victims somehow. Or rather... _devours_ them.

They'd all known it was a possibility. The Abbey hadn't had time to create a new therion after Teresa's death, but their intervention wasn't the only way it was possible. Grimoirh had pointed out one of the lines from the book the last time they'd spoken: "But so long as one is receptive to divine power, therions shall be forever reborn in sight of the full crimson moon." And there _had_ been a Scarlet Night at the right time. That, she'll never forget...

But she'd never expected that she might actually have to face one, and now... It wasn't that there was a special urgency, exactly, beyond the harm the Hollow Knight was already causing. L- Maotelus had made it very clear that while he could feel stirrings from within the knot of folded space that hid the slumbering Innominat from view, the Suppressor was showing no signs of waking no matter how much malevolence the 'new' therion devoured.

The problem is the memories.

_Velvet..._

There's a knock on her door, and she's grateful for it, even knowing how the innkeeper will address her. "Lady Shepherd? Is this a good time?"

She glances at the notes. "It's fine. Has there been another sighting?"

"No, but - it's rather peculiar. Have you looked out your window recently?"

Eleanor does, and frowns. Even by the standards of these last couple of years, the sky looks... wrong, somehow. There are clouds boiling up out of nowhere - not unusual these days - but they're tinted a strange color, a pale red. Like a sunset reflecting on them, except it's only the middle of the afternoon. And the sky around the most obviously churning clouds is more of a colorless off-white.

She puts a gloved hand to the side of her chin in thought. "That does look worrisome. You should make sure everyone in the village is indoors-"

The ground shakes. Briefly, but enough to send dust raining down around her. From outside, she can hear shouts.

_Eleanor!_ The voice comes from inside her head; a trick of the pact that she and Maotelus have only recently figured out.

_What's going on?_

_I'm not sure. There's something strange happening with the flow of mana along the earthpulses. It's everywhere I can sense, but the strongest concentrations are in the forest just outside of where you are and-_ His voice cuts off. 

_And?_

_And... above the Throne. With them._

Eleanor is out the door with her spear in hand before the innkeeper has time to speak again.

***

By the time she's out into the woods, the clouds have covered the sky. An early darkness has fallen, but a darkness that's tinted a strange and eerie red. It reminds her more and more of the Scarlet Night-

The tremors continue, too. Never strong enough that she worries for the safety of the villagers, or even that she needs to brace herself with her spear for more than a moment. But they also remind her of that night.

Eizen's words, in her memory:

"The ancients also say that when the four Empyreans awaken, there's a great shift in the earth..."

_And what about the Fifth?_

_I still don't think he's waking up, Eleanor,_ Maotelus's voice comes. _But **something's** happening._

_Can you... speak to the other four Empyreans? Maybe they'd have some idea what's going on._

_They've, um... never really been very talkative. You remember. I-_ There's suddenly a gasp, or the mental equivalent of one, over the link.

_Laph-_ She **has** to stop doing that. _Maotelus? What's happening?_

_That clearing, up ahead, on your left._ The voice in her mind is suddenly very urgent, and a lot younger than it's been since he became an Empyrean. _Hurry!_

She can see the clearing up ahead easily. There's a... glow, of sorts, golden lights raining from nowhere that she can tell. Illuminating - what? A wavy cloud of darkness, malevolence wisping away. Only it's not just malevolence. There's something more solid in there, something-

Something she's had a hard time forgetting.

Someone she's-

_No. No no no. This isn't possible._

The lights are settling to the ground as she races forward, spear forgotten, and catches the figure inside them as she slumps to her knees. But there's still enough that she knows she's not mistaken as the cloud of familiar dark hair turns around, brushing and tickling her nose in a familiar way, until she's staring into amber eyes.

"Velvet?"

***

_Why would he-_

"Velvet?"

_Why couldn't I-_

"Velvet!"

She wants to flinch from the hands on her shoulders, but doesn't. She's still not entirely sure how it got to that point, but she knows she can't hide from Eleanor. Not at the end, and not now. She looks up and meets the other girl's eyes. (Eleanor isn't crying, for once...)

"Velvet, how are you here? I-I don't understand..."

"He's gone." Her voice as she speaks out loud for the first time in - she has no idea - is ragged, almost painful. It hadn't been like this before, when she escaped from Titania. The transition from speaking only to fulfill a specific purpose or let out her rage to something almost approaching normality had been so gradual that she was only aware of it looking back...

"Innominat?" Eleanor looks down, seeing the fading golden lights now down on the forest floor around them for what they are for the first time. Dragon scales. Lit from the inside but now fading.

"And-and Laphi. They're both gone." She sways for a moment, and Eleanor helps hold her up. Velvet doesn't want her to, but it's just easier, right now. _Funny. I've been asleep for - years? - you'd think I should feel better-rested._

"Velvet, I need to get you back to the village. Can you stand?"

"What village?" There's a terrible possibility starting to edge around her mind. She recognizes these woods, in their autumn colors that are starting to become more obvious as the clouds overhead recede, letting in natural sunlight again. She clenches her fist - her right fist, she can't feel anything from her left arm at all - tightly, almost thinking to draw blood, before she remembers: that hadn't proved anything before, had it?

"Auralond." (She sighs in relief. (It's one of the new villages that's popped up near the edge of the Morgana Woods in the - in the last three years."

Three years. The number seems fitting.

"Come on." Eleanor offers a hand to help her up, and after a moment, Velvet takes it.

***

They start out the journey moving together, but by the time they reach Auralond, Eleanor is pretty much the only thing keeping Velvet on her feet. The therion (or... is that what she is, anymore?) hasn't said anything else, but she doesn't seem well, almost stumbling on a number of occasions, not at all as graceful as Eleanor remembers. Not that she's surprised, given what she said.

She asks Maotelus, on the way, for confirmation. _I think so. That connection between us... it's completely gone, now._ His voice seems hesitant, distracted.

_Then... Innominat is really dead._ The idea isn't totally alien to her: they'd realized, eventually, after Velvet had sealed herself and Innominat away, that Magilou's idea of it being an infinite loop wouldn't quite work. The amount of malevolence needed to perpetually sustain the Empyrean's existence was more than any one being could provide, therion, dragon, or otherwise. (There had been a reason the "dragon farm" on Hexen Isle was so large - even now, she still wants to flinch away from that thought, but...) But they'd all expected a gradual fading, not one over this short a time.

_But if he is dead..._ She swallows. _Then so is Velvet's brother. Entirely, this time._

The tremors - not, it seems, the heralds of an Empyrean's waking so much as one's passing - have stopped entirely as they enter the village, and the sky has returned to normal. But there's plenty of villagers outside in the town's budding square, almost trampling the tree they've planted at its center in their anxiety to ask answers from the 'Shepherd.' She glances guiltily at Velvet at that word, but Velvet barely even seems conscious anymore, and Eleanor doesn't hesitate when she gives directions to the townspeople. In moments, a balding, bespectacled man in a priest's robe is approaching the two of them.

Her encounters with Father Morgan since she arrived here have been a bit awkward: a faithful member of the Church of the Empyreans since long before the Advent, he'd wound up stationed on the edge of the world for his enduring skepticism about the appearance of a "fifth" Empyrean who had suddenly become the central focus of the church. And while he'd been seemingly vindicated when Innominat disappeared and his exorcists lost their powers, he was now even more cynical about the reports of Maotelus's ascension, and extremely suspicious about her own status.

But he's also the closest thing to a doctor Auralond has, one who the villagers trust implicitly in that regard, and she has no hesitation when it comes to surrendering Velvet to his care. Not that she doesn't want to tag along, to keep watching her...

"Such an... unkempt young woman." There's a disapproving sniff. "How do you two know each other, exactly?"

Eleanor opens her mouth and then closes it, not sure how she should even _begin_ to answer that question. "It's a long story." She feels herself redden slightly as the priest regards her.

"Hmm. I'll just bet."

***

When Velvet awakes, she can't remember any dreams (for once). She thinks that's probably for the best.

"How... how are you feeling?"

Eleanor is sitting besides her bed - she glances around the room briefly, then dismisses it as what seems to be a typical small-town inn room - on a chair that seems to have been dragged in. She doesn't look to have changed that much in... three years, even to the point of still wearing her Abbey praetor's uniform. She had let her hair down, though (and didn't seem to be keeping it that neatly combed). _Phi's right, she does look better that-_

_Wait, what?_

"Velvet?" Eleanor looks concerned, and Velvet almost winces. 

"I'm fine. I just... have a lot of things to sort out in my head." There's all the dreams, and knowing how they had ended, and also... a faint echo of a conversation she can barely recall, but knows is important. Except-

_I don't want to think about that right now._

Eleanor clasps her hands together. "Do you want something to eat?" She reaches down to the floor and lifts up a bowl containing a few light vegetables and fruits. "Father Morgan... I, um, didn't entirely clarify your situation to him, but he said that you should start with something light for now."

Velvet picks out an apple slice - it seems appropriate - and gnaws briefly on it. She notices Eleanor watching her. "What?"

"Could you... could you taste that?"

Velvet blinks. "...No. Why would that have changed? Three years didn't make me stop being a daemon."

"I know, but... Have you looked at your left arm?"

She hasn't, in fact, though there has been something a little strange about how feels. Lifting it from under the covers, she glances down - and stops. The bandages are gone, but her daemonic feeding claw isn't present either. Instead, what she sees is a withered, nearly skeletal husk terminating in a claw-hand with all five bony fingers bent inward. She tries to flex them. Nothing.

She looks back up, feeling numb, to meet Eleanor's gaze. "Father Morgan had no idea what to make of it. I don't either, not really, but Velvet... I don't think you're a therion anymore."

***

Later, Eleanor leans against the side of a fence at the edge of the village, thinking back as she waits. It's not that far to the nearest earthpulse point, so she doesn't expect it to take too long.

_Velvet stares at her, and even after all the time they spent together - the patterns that she's found herself falling back into so easily, as if nothing has changed in three years - Eleanor still can't read her expression. "Well. I suppose that makes sense. Innominat's dead, after all."_

_Eleanor swallows. She can't read the tone of voice either. "Velvet... I have to ask. Do you know what happened?"_

_Velvet doesn't answer, instead turning to eat another apple slice. It's a mechanical action._

_Eleanor clasps her hands behind her back and tries to offer a smile. "Well, I-I guess it doesn't matter right now. Um, when you're done... do you think you're up to seeing a visitor? Because I know someone who wants to come by..."_

_Velvet freezes and looks up. Slowly, one edge of her mouth quirks up into a smile._

Eleanor shook up her head and laughed softly to herself. Velvet's indignant tone from a bit later is still audible in her mind.

_"Maotelus? Seriously? So he got annoyed about me calling him Phi, but THAT's okay?"_

She looks upward at the sound of footsteps coming down the 'path' - really more of just a stretch of flattened-down grass at this point - that leads into Auralond. He's wearing his original form, the little boy with that one irrepressible hair springing up, and after a moment she decides from the faint glow that it's a projection. Maotelus can physically assume his original form as opposed to that of the Dragon of Light, but only for brief amounts of time. She gathers it's something to do with his specific nature as an Empyrean, analogous to an oath.

"You probably could have just shown up as you are now," she tells him as they walk into town together. "I'm sure Velvet would understand."

He smiles. "Maybe, but think about it. Even if most people can't see me, I'm still physically present. Right? I'm not sure a dragon would fit into this town very well...."

Eleanor laughs and blushes. "Right, sorry. I guess I haven't really been that focused these last couple of days."

He looks up at her, smiling again. "Don't worry. I understand."

Once they reach the inn, he hesitates at the top of the stairs, and Eleanor looks down, reflecting that even an Empyrean can be nervous. "Do you want me to go in with you?"

"No, I think I'd like to speak with her alone."

She smiles. "All right, then." It makes sense. She and Velvet are a lot closer now than she ever expected, but there are some things that are still too personal, and that's okay. Not everyone has to share everything.

***

Still, she didn't expect quite the level of raised voices she could overhear...

She asks Velvet about it the next day, when the two are sitting at a table in the inn's common room.

"What did you expect? There's a part of him that's still angry about..." The other girl looks down. "Everything that happened, at the end." She sighs. "I guess it's easier to accept something if you don't... If you don't expect..." Her hand clenches.

Eleanor very carefully doesn't say anything. But that just means the silence stretches until:

"So have you seen any of the others recently?"

She accepts Velvet's attempt to change the subject gratefully. "We actually all met up this last summer, in fact. Though I'm afraid it turned into an argument."

Velvet snorts. "Of course it did..."

"Rokurou and I suggested to Eizen that we all go and meet his sister, like she wanted, but because of his curse he was very against the idea. I tried telling him that Rokurou's probably the greatest swordsman in the world by now - even if he still doesn't think so - and I could at least try to purify any daemons that showed up, but still..." She shook her head. "I still can't decide sometimes if Eizen is the best or the worst brother a girl could hope for. Or both at the same time."

Velvet doesn't reply, and Eleanor wonders too late if it maybe wasn't the best topic to bring up. "Velvet... Have you given any thought to-?"

"No." She turns and looks at Eleanor. "I know what you're going to say. Laphicet already asked me the same thing. Save your flames for the people they'll work on."

Eleanor half-lifts a hand. "Velvet..."

"I saw it!" The shout turns both their heads. One of the town's woodcutters stands in the entrance to the inn, breathing hard. "The Hollow Knight! Not far outside the village, near Dumnon's Hill!"

Amid the sudden clamor of voices, several of the patrons turn to look at her. "Lady Shepherd-"

Eleanor stands and goes for the stairs, calling back over her shoulder. "Fear not. I came here to deal with the Hollow Knight, and I promise, I will. Everyone should stay inside the village for now. I'll let you know when it's safe."

She's at the entrance to her room before she realizes Velvet's right behind her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going with you. If this thing is really a therion, you shouldn't go after it alone." She holds up a hand to stop any protest. "I'll be fine."

Eleanor, of course, protests anyway. "Velvet, no! You only woke up a few days ago! And your arm-"

Velvet shakes her head. "It's still there, so it's not throwing off my balance. And I don't need it to fight. I just need a sword."

"That's right, yours broke during the battle with-" Eleanor pauses suddenly. Such a strange coincidence... "Hold on. I have something in my room."

She enters, and then comes out a moment later holding both her spear and a sword-bracer that isn't quite like what Velvet uses, but probably close enough. "This belonged to one of the first daemons I managed to purify. He'd been a mercenary who enjoyed fighting so much that it consumed him, and when he regained his humanity he chose to give it up entirely. I... hung onto this as a reminder."

Velvet lifts an eyebrow, and ever so subtly the edge of her mouth. "A reminder, huh?"

"That... even daemons aren't always..." She shakes her head. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I can take care of myself, you know."

Velvet shrugs. "I know. But if you don't have to do this alone, why should you?"

"I'm not gonna talk you out of this, am I?"

A grin. "Have you ever?"

***

They don't exchange any words once they're out in the woods, not until they're nearly at the hill. She can easily see, through the gaps in the trees, that the woodsman's report was accurate. A huge figure in dark armor, reminding her more than a bit of the headless knight they fought at Titania, is indeed lying against the side of the hill. The size alone is proof, just in case she needed it, that the stories about the Hollow Knight weren't just exaggerations about some dangerous but merely human bandit: the figure is at least eight feet tall.

She looks at Velvet, who nods. "Definitely a daemon. Big, too."

"We've fought bigger." 

"You sound pretty confident, Shepherd Eleanor."

Eleanor flinches, but there's no more bite than usual to Velvet's words. If anything, she just sounds amused. "If - if we need to talk about that..."

Velvet shakes her head. "That's not what's bothering me right now." She pauses. "That hunk of armor. Are you seeing what I'm seeing around it?"

There are definitely flecks of malevolence drifting through the air around the motionless knight - seeing them more clearly has been a side-effect of her altered pact with Maotelus, although Eleanor hesitates to call it a "benefit." But while she can feel the chill from where she is, there don't seem to be nearly enough of them for a therion, or even just a daemon of normal power. In fact-

Her eyes narrow as she stares at the Hollow Knight, but though the seconds start to drag on into minutes, the armored daemon still doesn't move, and the malevolence leaking off it shows no sign of changing.

"Velvet... I think it's dead."

Velvet inches forward. "Not surprising, if it really was a therion. We always theorized they'd die if Innominat did." She frowns. "It must have been a powerful one, to still put out this much malevolence days after it died..."

"But then... Why didn't you-"

Velvet strides out of the cover of the trees and approaches the motionless armored giant. Eleanor feels a sudden urge to groan, gasp, and press her hand against her head, all at once, as Velvet approaches the Hollow Knight and kicks it lightly with one booted foot. She glances back. "It's definitely dead."

Muttering under her breath, Eleanor follows and studies the corpse. If that's even the right word - a glimpse inside the half-opened visor makes it clear that there really is nothing inside the helmet...

A crash comes from the woods to their left.

The thing bursting out of the trees was probably originally a bear before succumbing to malevolence; that's certainly what it most closely resembles. The legs are elongated and more powerfully muscled, though, allowing the daemon to lurch forward on them in an unsettlingly bipedal manner. Strange hairless bulges - almost fungal in nature - protrude from its back and shoulders, while long spikes jut out of its forearms.

She leaps back, raising her spear to a guard position, as the daemon smashes down onto the remains of the Hollow Knight, flattening the armor with a loud clang. Velvet leaps aside in the other direction. "What the hell?!"

"It must have been drawn by the malevolence leaking from the corpse!" A slash with the cutting edge of her spearhead draws a few drops of blood, but more importantly gets the creature's attention focused entirely on her, letting Velvet approach from behind and aim a blow at the legs. The daemon-bear dodges aside at the last moment, though.

"And it just happened to show up at the same time we did? Seriously..."

"I guess spending so much time around Eizen rubbed off on us!"

The bear's movements are fairly predictable, and she soon thinks she has them figured out enough to make her move. She aims her spear at the thing's center of mass and lets the mana well up inside. "Spiral-"

The daemon-bear rears up and _launches_ two of its arm spikes at her. She jerks aside to miss the first one and deflects the second with a sudden twist of her spear, but more spikes grow out of the arms with a disgusting squelching sound. Then-

"Haaaaah!" She only barely gets a glimpse as Velvet dives forward behind the daemon, sword drawn, and slashes to the left and right. With a roar the huge monster collapses, and for a moment that seems way too long at the time Eleanor can't see Velvet anywhere. Then she spots her rolling away, though, and exhales briefly.

The daemon-bear isn't getting up, and Eleanor guesses that Velvet's hamstrung it. It's not impossible that the wounds might heal, given time, but she doesn't intend to give it that time. She draws upon the bond and tries to focus on what's still, after three years, a power she only poorly understands. Then drives her spear into one of the massive bulges atop the daemon and-

Silver fire washes over the creature, leaving an ordinary brown bear unconscious on the ground.

***

Velvet rolls her eyes as Eleanor kneels besides the unconscious bear, applying cupped light in her hands to its wounds (evidently she's learned some new tricks over the past years). For once, it's not really an exorcist thing - she just doesn't really think of _bears_ as the sort of animals you waste time worrying about. They'd caused more than enough trouble for Aball's livestock when she was a girl, after all, no 'daemonblight' required.

But as Eleanor stands up and turns to face her, that vague annoyance/amusement gets quickly pushed aside. There's a glittering in the exorcist's green eyes that she's seen more than once before, but to see it right now-

"I thought you said you'd be fine!"

Velvet blinks. "I... am fine."

Eleanor strides angrily up to her. "You don't have your powers as a therion anymore! I wasn't sure when you just walked up to the Hollow Knight's body, but that last attack you made was so reckless... I just..." She heaves a deep breath.

"I keep wondering if you even wanted to come back."

Velvet stares at her. And remembers, from the talk she had with Laphicet (I'm not thinking of him as "Maotelus"...):

_"And it wasn't just me, Velvet! You hurt the rest of us when you left, too, especially..."_

_"Especially?"_

_"I think Eleanor is in love with you."_

She swallows. "I didn't have a choice. We know that for sure, now." She gestures in the direction of the Hollow Knight's mangled remains. "If I hadn't sealed myself away with Innominat, Phi and the other therions, they would..." She has to say it if she's going to make Eleanor understand. "They would have died, because of my sins. I had to stop that."

Eleanor's less than a foot away from her now. "But what if there had been some other way? I keep telling myself you did it to save them, but... I know how much you blamed yourself for everything..." She brushes her eyes. "Velvet, why did you come back? What happened?"

Velvet looks away. "I came back because of Laphi." She walks towards the forest line, not really seeing it. "Even once I stopped trying to deny that-that I loved them, I wanted to think of them as separate. Arthur and Artorius. Laphi and Innominat. But..."

She remembers that brief moment of confusion during the final battle, after the comb shattered, deflecting an attack from a god when it shouldn't have even deflected the blow of an ordinary human.

_"O..of course. I'm Innominat, now reborn. And you're the Lord of Calamity..."_

She remembers words she half-thought were a dream, on the night her world came to an end.

_"I'll make a new world... A world where my sister can be happy."_

She remembers words from before that, that's she heard again echoed at the end of a dream.

_"I want you to be happy, that's all."_

She turns to face Eleanor. "Whatever part of him still existed inside Innominat, he still wanted for me to be happy. Not just existing in dreams and illusions, but living an actual life. And so, somehow... he chose to die, so that I could go free. I don't think it would have been possible if Phi hadn't taken his place as the fifth Empyrean, but... It doesn't matter what he wanted..." Her fists clench - the first time she's been able to move her left hand since she woke up. "He didn't give me a _choice!_ I remember him saying goodbye, now, but he didn't let _me_ say anything! _Again,_ my own brother-"

"You didn't give _us_ a choice, Velvet!"

Eleanor is practically in her face now. "Huh?"

"You hinted to me what you wanted to do, but you never gave me the time to try and find another way! You only told Laphicet at the end, when it was too late to do anything! I told you before, I want to make a world where everyone can be happy, and that includes you!" She was really crying now, not just teary-eyed like usual. "A-and I still don't know whether you were really sacrificing yourself, or if you just still couldn't believe you deserved to live!"

Velvet isn't really sure when in there she found herself holding Eleanor by the shoulders, but she is, and for a moment she just stays that way, letting her cry it out. Then:

"Is life something you have to deserve?"

Eleanor looks at her. "Th-that's... What your sister said to Artorius when they met, right?"

"Yeah. If he'd ever managed to fully believe her..." She sighs. "I don't know. Maybe it would have changed something."

She lets go of Eleanor and stands back, her right arm holding her left as it dangles limply. (It almost looks like the way Eleanor stands sometimes when she's feeling vulnerable, she realizes). "You're right. I don't know if I think I deserve to live. I've never known that. Becoming a daemon made it so much worse, but..."

_"It was always there, in the back of my mind. If only it hadn't been Celica and my son who were killed that day. If only it had been... you two instead."_

She looks at the former exorcist. "So yeah, maybe part of me did just think it would easiest if I left the world behind. I don't... I don't know what I'm going to do now, how I'm supposed to... But... I know I won't be able to find an answer on my own. I wanted Phi to live. I wanted all of you to live, and to be as happy as you could. That's why I did what I did." She shrugs. "I don't know if you'll believe me, or even if you should. You've always been a lot tougher than I am that way."

Eleanor blinks in open bafflement. "Tougher than you? Velvet, I... When I was a girl, after I lost my mother, I spent months wishing I was the one who died instead. I still don't know how..." She looks down. "And even then, when I first met you - even though Laphicet was depending on me as his vessel, even though I made you an oath, I almost killed myself _twice_ because I was too weak to live with my own decisions. How can you even _say_ something like that?"

Velvet reaches out and lifts her chin until they're looking at each other again. "You don't know how many times I... In the cell at Titania..." She trails off. "I had my revenge to keep me going. At least that's what I told myself. But you had your ideals." Her lips twist. "Even if they were, well, the Abbey's ideals. You knew what you were living for. All I knew is what to not die for. Now... I'm not sure, honestly. Except maybe what I said before, and you don't have to believe..." She isn't sure how to finish the sentence.

But Eleanor looks at her again, and smiles. "I know one of the things I believe about you - about all of us - is that the only ones we can really live for is ourselves." She looks down at the ground, turning red. "Although... that doesn't mean I..."

Velvet holds out a hand. "I know. Even if we're living for ourselves, you want us to do it side-by-side. Laphicet told me." She leans to one side and rests her left arm against her hip. "Not that he needed to. I'm not _clueless_ , you know."

Eleanor laughs. "You... kind of are, actually." She takes Velvet's right hand between both of her and, a bit suddenly, pulls her forward. "But that's okay. I think I can get used to it..."

***

They didn't realize it at the time, but that conversation was the start of their answers.

There's more of it much, much later, when they're on a ship heading to nowhere in particular, watching the sun set into a rare (in these times) untroubled sea.

"Velvet." She turns to look at Eleanor, where the two of them are both leaning against a deck rail. "You're twenty-three now, right?"

"Unfortunately," the daemon mutters, and Eleanor stifles a laugh. They'd encountered Rokurou a few months ago, having hired himself onto a merchant caravan as protection against a pack of bandits known for their swordsmanship (though to the yaksha's disappointment, that reputation had been seriously exaggerated), and she'd found it more than a little cute to watch Velvet trying very hard to come up with excuses not to have a drink with him now that she actually was past the drinking age in every one of Midgand's provinces. "Is there a reason you're bringing this up?"

"Back in my village, the tradition was always that twenty-three was the age people got married, if not sooner. There was some reason behind that specific number that I don't really remember, but..." Even after months together she knows she's turning red. "I don't know, I could never really imagine it. I was just wondering if the same went for you, or..."

Velvet doesn't look at her either. From her tone of voice, though, Eleanor knows that this time it's not for any reason she needs to be concerned about...

Or, well, _that_ kind of concerned, anyway...

"As the Lord of Calamity, I'm probably supposed to sneer at the whole idea, but... Honestly, I remember when Celica and... and Arthur got married, and while I was mostly just feeling kind of smug about being old enough to help hold up her skirts while Laphi had to stay in the waiting room with the rest of the toddlers... I looked at my sister in that dress, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I imagined wearing it one day myself when I was grown up."

_That's adorable,_ Eleanor carefully does not say. "Whatever happened to it?"

"Celica was always talking about selling it off, but she never did. I think Arthur finally did, eventually, four? Four years after the Advent. He said we didn't need it to remember her by, and the money could do a lot of good for the family." She imagines Velvet's mouth twisting, but from her tone of voice it must be more rueful than angry. "Good old 'reason' at work again. Of course, it did mean a whole season of not having to do anything to earn Laphi's money, and by then I _was_ certainly sure I wasn't going to be doing anything stupid like getting married to some random stranger."

Eleanor props her chin on her arms and looks at Velvet. "Why'd you think it'd be some random stranger?"

"I dunno. All the other girls in the village around my age" - Velvet looks at her with half-closed eyes and a wistful grin - "and by 'all the other' I mean three or four of them - were starting to become interested in boys, and I wasn't. Although... I do remember once telling Niko that if she never got married, I'd love to move in with her, and take care of everything she needed, and spend time with her whenever she needed a break, and... well. You get the picture. So I guess I didn't _actually_ think marriage was so stupid, as long as it was with the right person." She tilts her head and looks at Eleanor again, in a way that makes her half-formed giggles cut short. "But you still didn't mention why you were bringing this up..."

Eleanor feels herself blush again. "Well, um..."

***

Velvet looks up, away from the cattails and the river, and watches the leaves above rustling in the breeze. They're a riot of colors again, red and orange and yellow, disorderly yet beautiful. She isn't quite sure if it's been just over or just under a year since she woke up - she hadn't paid attention to the calendar at the time, and since then she just... hasn't wanted to check, with Eleanor or anyone else. She's not entirely sure why, except maybe...

_Maybe it makes it clear that there is no such thing as a clean break._

That thought gets driven in further by the burst of cold in the breeze that briefly washes over her without her feeling much of it at all. Eleanor and Phi (she's never using "Maotelus") had both spoken at her again recently about trying the flames of purification, but while she could understand why that was on their minds now in particular, she'd still said no. _I will go on living, no matter what, but I won't stop living with what I've done in the past._

She looks at the cattails again and reaches one hand in their direction-

"Hey, picking on the poor flowers? Aren't you supposed to have gotten over all of that stuff, hmmm?" The chirpy voice is unmistakeable.

Velvet sighs. Smiles. "And since when have YOU been worried about the well-being of flowers, Magilou?"

"Hey now." Looking entirely unchanged from three - no, four, now - years ago, the witch crouches down besides her at the water's edge. "Is the first thing you're going to say to your dear dear friend after so long really going to be yet more uncalled-for sarcasm? And on your wedding day, no less?"

Velvet shakes her head. "How did you even-"

"Once again and with feeling: I'm a witch, sweetie!" Magilou shrugs. "Besides, everyone loves a wedding. Have you picked out a Best Thing yet? Bienfu says he's ready and willing if you haven't."

Velvet stands up. "I may not be able to eat you anymore, but you know I still have a sword, right?"

"Ouch. Way to cut me to the quick, literally." The witch (or storyteller, as she's apparently calling herself these days) springs up next to her. "So what's the deal with the water flowers anyway? They kind of look like... ugly weeds, really."

"They're cattails," Eleanor says from across the way. Velvet turns to look at her, and smiles. Like her, Eleanor hasn't changed into a dress yet, though she does have on long pale blue gloves, matching the white one Velvet has on over her left arm.

Magilou pulls a face. "Hey, far be it from me to be the voice of pessimism, but isn't it bad luck for the bride to see the - in this case - other bride before the ceremony actually starts?" She shrugs elaborately. "Or so I hear."

Velvet folds her arms. "I'm pretty sure by now he's not showing up, but we did invite Eizen. Bad luck isn't really a worry."

"Well, three years in dreamland didn't make _you_ any less blithely confident," Magilou grouses. "Anyway! The cattails? Kind of an auspicious name from a pair of dog people."

Eleanor reaches Velvet and takes her hand. "I told her that they mean 'peace and prosperity' in the language of flowers."

"I'm still surprised you knew that and I didn't," Velvet says under her breath. Eleanor laughs.

"Well, I dunno about peace, but prosperity seems like a pretty good thing to hope for, considering that you still owe me, oh, 100 bazillion gald!" She taps her cheek. "Or is it 100 bajillion? I never was good with my imaginary math. Does the Shepherd gig have any family benefits, hmm?"

Eleanor ignores her and starts in the direction of the sanctuary, but stops when she realizes Velvet isn't following. "Hey. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Velvet squeezes her hand. "It's just... this still won't be enough of an answer. You know that, right? Not for how I'm supposed to live out the rest of my life. Even being here..." She looks around at Auralond. "It's too much like Aball for me to ever really be at peace."

Eleanor takes her other hand - extra-gently, as even now it still hasn't regained much flexibility of movement. (Though at this point Velvet's pretty much accepted that's how it's going to be. She's paid worse prices for her choices, after all.) "Don't worry, I know we're not staying. We're only here because it's where you woke up and because Father Morgan's one of the only priests I know who won't make a fuss about performing the Shepherd's marriage ceremony," a rueful sigh, "because he still doesn't actually believe in me or Maotelus..."

Magilou (who has been clearly avoiding listening up to this point) walks up and winks. "Hey, as long as you don't get stage fright again, Vel, this should be no sweat to you. 'I do', kiss the girl, exit stage left. The rest's just a waste of time anyway."

Velvet shakes her head and turns to look back at the flowers by the river. She still didn't know what her answer was, but...

One year since she'd woken up.

One year living without the sort of consuming purpose she'd been driven by for so long.

One year living with constant doubts that any of this was real, because how could the Lord of Calamity deserve a peaceful life after everything she...

_After everything I..._

One year living.

She turns back to Eleanor and smiles again. Looks up at the sky, wondering whether, or more likely how, Phi ( _not_ Maotelus!) will manage to put in an appearance. Turns briefly back to the east, to where she knows what's left of Aball is slowly being reclaimed by the forest... She squeezes Eleanor's hand. _One more year shouldn't be too hard._

**Author's Note:**

> So I noticed that the remix of Eleanor's theme in the Berseria credits had bells in it. This fix pretty much snowballed out of that. I've spent about a month trying to get it into some kind of shape, and this is the best I can manage.
> 
> Part of the second-to-last scene is inspired by [this comic.](https://talesfemslashweek.tumblr.com/post/163261811084/nemesisfall-day-4-dreams-a) Which I guess makes this recursive Tales of Femslash?
> 
> BTW, this is *not* the sequel to "dreams of a girl with red hair" that I've occasionally alluded to possibly writing. (Although you can take it that way, if you want, since there's a fair amount of overlap.)


End file.
